SEL-Focused After-School Programs

SEL-Focused After-School Programs

Noelle Hurd and Nancy Deutsch

Summary
After-school programs offer young people opportunities for self-expression, exploring their
talents, and forming relationships with supportive adults. That is, after-school programs
promote young people’s social and emotional learning (SEL) skills—whether the programs use
that term or not.
Despite these programs’ potential, Noelle Hurd and Nancy Deutsch write, they have yet to
make a big impact on the field of SEL. One reason is that studying them poses many problems
for researchers—for example, attendance isn’t mandatory, meaning that it can be hard to
separate a program’s effects from young people’s personal characteristics that led them to
choose the program in the first place. Still, research shows that after-school programs can
promote many desirable SEL outcomes, and Hurd and Deutsch outline the factors that make
high-quality programs stand out.
How could policy help after-school programs promote SEL more effectively? First, positive
youth-staff relationships are crucial to effective programs, and competent adult staff are the
linchpin of effective after-school programs targeting SEL outcomes. Yet the after-school
work force is poorly paid, and turnover is high. Hurd and Deutsch suggest several ways to
professionalize after-school work—for example, by boosting professional development and
creating more opportunities for career advancement.
Second, as schools have become more focused on standardized test scores, funders and
policymakers have pushed after-school programs, too, to demonstrate their academic impact.
Hurd and Deutsch write that this approach is misguided: overemphasizing academic outcomes
leads to neglect of SEL outcomes that can help young people become productive and engaged
citizens. They argue for expanding the criteria used to determine whether after-school
programs are effective to include SEL. More broadly, they write, high-stakes evaluations create
a disincentive for programs to undertake the difficult work of assessing and improving their
own practices. A better approach to evaluation would focus less on whether programs “work”
and instead seek ways to make them work better.

www.futureofchildren.org

Noelle Hurd is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia. Nancy Deutsch is an associate
professor in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia.
Robert Granger, former president of the William T. Grant Foundation, reviewed and critiqued a draft of this article.

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Noelle Hurd and Nancy Deutsch
O
ut-of-school settings, such
as after-school programs and
community organizations,
are natural sites for social
and emotional learning
(SEL) interventions. Because these
programs and organizations don’t have
schools’ curricular demands and often
have broader developmental goals and
missions, they can focus on SEL skills and
outcomes to a greater extent than schools
can. Many of the types of skills that SEL
interventions target are also implicit or
explicit in the missions and objectives of
out-of-school programs. Yet despite their
potential to strongly influence SEL, out-of-
school programs generally have had limited
impact on the field of SEL, possibly because
of their diversity—they range from after-
school and summer programs to family- and
community-level interventions—or the
challenges of evaluating interventions in
such settings. In this article, we examine
research specific to SEL interventions that
occur outside of school hours. But rather
than consider all out-of-school contexts, we
limit our scope to after-school programs,
defined as adult-structured programs for
students that are offered during the school
year between the hours of 3:00 and 6:00
p.m.1 Moreover, we review only programs
that explicitly target what we define as SEL
skills, whether the program uses the term
SEL or not. This narrowed focus lets us be
more thorough. In any case, most of the
research on SEL interventions in out-of-
school contexts has taken place in after-
school programs rather than other settings.
Thus research on after-school programs also
offers the best opportunity to learn what
works.
Even though SEL goals are common in
programs that operate outside of school
9 6  T H E F U T UR E OF C HI L DRE N
time (a history we review below), only one
extensive review has examined whether
after-school programs that focus on social
and personal development hold promise
for boosting students’ SEL development.
In this article, we go over the findings from
that analysis, paying particular attention
to the features of effective programs. We
also briefly review a broader set of studies
that investigate the impacts of participating
in SEL-focused after-school programs. To
structure the article, we ask five questions
specific to SEL and after-school programs:
1. Are after-school programs well
suited for promoting SEL?
2. Is it realistic to expect after-school
programs to affect SEL?
3. Do after-school programs affect
SEL?
4. Why have findings thus far been so
disappointing?
5. Where should researchers and
practitioners focus in the future?
We conclude with policy implications for
promoting SEL via after-school programs.
Are After-School Programs Well
Suited for Promoting SEL?
The history of formal after-school programs
suggests that they’ve always focused on
SEL. Such programs arose in response
to changing social conditions and the
constraints of school, and their goals are
often aligned with those of SEL. Thus,
research on after-school programs often asks
whether and how they foster SEL-related
competencies. After-school programs are
also rich in relationships. They offer good
opportunities for young people to form the

kinds of relationships with adults that we
believe enhance SEL.
The history of formal after-
school programs suggests that
they’ve always focused on
SEL.
Historical Perspective
After-school programs have been around
for more than a century, and they’ve
always aimed to foster positive youth
development broadly, including what
we now call SEL. After-school programs
were developed in the late 19th century
as a practitioner-based movement, long
before they became a field of study. Early
programs sprang from reformers’ concerns
about children’s safety and socialization.
Child labor and compulsory education laws
combined to leave children free during
the after-school hours. In large cities
with growing immigrant populations and
crowded housing, many working-class and
low-income children spent their out-of-
school time on the streets. Child advocates
worried about these trends. They saw a
need for safe spaces where children could
play after school. They also saw a need
for adults to structure and supervise such
play to socialize children in middle-class
American values. The programs they built
varied greatly and local actors developed
their own aims and policies within them, yet
they shared common goals. In his history of
after-school programming, Robert Halpern
identified the early goals of the field as
protecting and caring for children; giving
children opportunities to play, frequently
as a means to promote SEL-related skills;
SEL-Focused After-School Programs
preventing delinquency among boys and
reducing sexual risk among girls; teaching
vocational and domestic skills (for boys and
girls, respectively); and Americanization
of immigrant youth, who made up a large
proportion of the children served by early
programs.2 The adult staff members in
these programs were to provide consistent
oversight, guidance, role modeling, and
support. From the beginning, programs
differentiated themselves from schools in
both their aims and activities.
These broad trends continued through
the mid-20th century. Although these
programs’ aims were shaped by changing
demographics and by societal developments
such as mass media, the economy, and
families’ work circumstances, the focus
on play, children’s developmental needs,
and after-school programs as unique out-
of-school settings continued. During the
second half of the 20th century, programs
again responded to social concerns about
low-income children.3 Reformers feared
that these children were feeling alienated
from broader American society. As a result,
after-school programs became a space
where poor children could “feel valued and
recognized.”4 At the same time, after-school
programs continued to identify themselves
as places where children who felt alienated
by schools could express themselves and
experience a sense of belonging. In the
1960s, in response to increasing worries
about urban poverty, programs began to
focus more on academic activities, which
gave them access to government funding
earmarked for improving education in high-
poverty neighborhoods. And as more and
more mothers entered the work force in
the late 20th century, public attention again
turned to after-school programs as safe,
supervised spaces for children.
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Noelle Hurd and Nancy Deutsch
Although most programs retained their
core recreational activities and continued
to offer young people opportunities for
self-expression, exploring their talents,
and forming relationships with supportive
adults, it also became increasingly common
to set aside time for children to get help
with their homework. More recently, after-
school programs have been under pressure
to demonstrate academic impacts, but
this push has been driven by funders and
policy makers rather than the programs
themselves. As schools have become more
focused on standardized test scores, after-
school programs, too, have been pushed to
demonstrate their academic impact. This
trend threatens after-school programs’
traditional focus on self-expression,
exploration, and development.
Despite the increased pressure to boost test
scores, numerous after-school programs
explicitly aim to enhance young people’s
social and emotional competencies. For
example, Boys & Girls Clubs of America,
one of the nation’s largest networks of
out-of-school centers (serving nearly
four million children at four thousand
clubs), seeks to “promote and enhance the
development of boys and girls by instilling a
sense of competence, usefulness, belonging
and influence.” Its mission is “to enable all
young people, especially those who need
us most, to reach their full potential as
productive, caring, responsible citizens.”5
Similarly, 4-H, which reaches six million
young people, aims to “[empower] young
people to be true leaders,” described as
“young people who have confidence; know
how to work well with others; can endure
through challenges; and will stick with a job
until it gets done.”6 4-H’ers work on four
values (the four H’s of the organization’s
name): head (managing, thinking), heart
9 8  T H E F U T UR E OF C HI L DRE N
(relating, caring), hands (giving, working),
and health (being, living). Although Boys
& Girls Clubs and 4-H both include some
academic programming, their goals are
much broader than academics alone,
encompassing the types of personal and
social competence that make up SEL.
The Role of Adult Staff
Competent adult staff are the linchpin of
effective after-school programs targeting
SEL outcomes.7 Interactions with staff
shape young people’s experiences, and those
interactions are the pathways through which
after-school programs affect SEL.8 Adult
staff influence young people’s outcomes
in many ways. They determine whether
the program’s space will be conducive to
SEL development, they implement the
curriculum and transmit the program’s
values, and they cultivate meaningful
relationships.
Effective Staff Practices for Promoting
SEL
Adult staff foster SEL development by
giving young people autonomy, choice,
and appropriate levels of structure and
supervision.9 Basing its recommendations
on the best developmental science research,
the National Research Council and Institute
of Medicine suggests that adults can foster
positive developmental settings by providing
eight components:10
• physical and psychological safety;
• appropriate structure;
• opportunities to belong;
• positive social norms;
• support for efficacy and mattering;

• opportunities for skill building;
• integration of family, school, and
community efforts, and
• nurturance and support.
Below, we apply each of these
recommendations to promoting SEL in
after-school programs.
Safety. Unquestionably, adult staff members’
ability to ensure participants’ physical and
emotional safety is vital—not just during the
program itself, but on the way to and from
it as well. Safety is a basic human need that
must be satisfied for young people to have
the mental resources they need to improve
their social and emotional competencies.
Staff can ensure safety by selecting safe
locations, by establishing transportation
plans that consider safety hazards, and by
including activities that foster healthy and
positive peer group interactions. Ensuring
safety also means understanding implicit
and explicit biases on the part of both staff
and young people, and collectively working
to confront these biases by modeling fair
treatment of young participants.
Structure. After-school programs should
be structured to ensure that they give
young people the stability to grow and
develop. Specifically, daily activities should
give young people space to process their
emotions, share their experiences, listen to
the experiences of others, work together
in teams, solve problems, and reflect on
the outcomes of their decisions.11 Staff
must find the right balance between giving
participants autonomy and, through clear
and consistent rules and expectations,
setting limits on their behavior. Depending
on their age and how long they participate in
the program, young people may also benefit
SEL-Focused After-School Programs
from increasing opportunities to help set
rules and expectations themselves. Thus,
staff can set and monitor clear boundaries
but also let young people make important
program decisions. University of Illinois
researchers Reed Larson and Rachel Angus
have called this approach “leading from
behind”; they found that young people
benefit most when adult staff support
participants’ leadership and offer “light
touch guidance and assistance as needed.”12
Belonging. By highlighting their strengths,
emphasizing healthy identity development,
and encouraging positive bonding, staff
can enhance young people’s sense of
belonging, which in turn will help recruit
and retain a diverse set of participants.13
Program staff must also deal effectively
with the participants’ social identities and
cultural backgrounds. Belonging is likely
to be more important to young people
from marginalized social groups, for
whom key developmental tasks include
being able to feel good about their group
membership and connection to similar
others. Participants should be able to feel
good about their own social identities (for
example, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual
orientation, ability status) and to interact
positively with members of different
groups. Thus, staff should ensure that
interactions occur on a level of equal
status, explicitly talk about difference in
relation to privilege and oppression, and
ask young people from different groups
to work collaboratively to achieve shared
goals.14 Because no population of young
people is homogeneous, staff should also
pay attention to differences within racial,
ethnic, cultural, gender, ability, and sexual
orientation groups, as well as between such
groups.15
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Positive social norms. Program staff can
foster SEL competencies by supporting a
group culture that is conducive to prosocial
values and behavior. For example, staff
can set expectations regarding the use of
inclusive language; group check-ins (in
which participants report on their weekly
highs and lows) can be an opportunity
for staff to model caring responses to the
good and bad things happening in young
people’s lives. Although a program’s cultural
norms should vary to accommodate the
participants’ backgrounds and needs,
prosocial norms are fundamental to
constructive behavior. Programs can
establish patterns of behavior that lead
participants to internalize certain values and
morals.16 In this way, behavioral patterns can
be self-reinforcing and solidified as good
habits. But if staff and participants don’t
intentionally establish positive social norms,
less favorable norms may emerge and
become difficult to alter. Therefore, staff
need to develop practices that foster good
behavior, mutual respect, and inclusivity
from the very beginning and maintain them
throughout the program.
Efficacy and mattering. Feeling effective
at appropriately challenging tasks and
making a difference in one’s social world
are central to growth in SEL competencies.
Adult program staff can foster efficacy and
mattering through engaging and personally
meaningful activities. As they progress from
childhood to adolescence, young people
are increasingly likely to benefit from
empowering, youth-centered programs.
They can learn to develop their own voice
and leadership potential when they have
a say in how programs are run or what
types of activities are made available.17
They can also help identify community
service projects or injustices that they
1 00   T HE F UT UR E OF C HI LDRE N
would like to take on. When activities have
consequences for real-world problems
facing them and their communities, young
people can gain a sense of mattering and
making a difference. Adult staff can help
them gain agency by actively seeking their
input and creating leadership positions
for them to fill. Adults also can give young
people greater responsibility based on
their age and experience in the program.
For example, youth-adult partnerships—
in which youth and adults work
collaboratively to address important social
issues—seek an equal distribution of power
between adult staff and participants.
Skill building. Staff can promote SEL
by letting participants plan, practice,
and perform targeted skills and apply
those skills to the real world; by giving
frequent feedback; by making sure that
young people take an active role in their
own learning; and by helping young
people focus on personal improvement
instead of comparing themselves to
others.18 Staff also can model SEL skills
themselves. Other ways to build skills
include coaching youth on successful
interactions with peers or adults, setting
high expectations for participants,
encouraging them to persevere when
things get tough, celebrating their effort,
and scaffolding (that is, providing more
support initially and gradually withdrawing
it as they become able to complete a
task independently).19 As in other areas,
young people’s cultures, backgrounds,
ages, and experiences should guide which
skills the program targets. For example,
an important SEL skill for young people
of color is bicultural competence, or
the ability to successfully navigate two
cultures. Thus, programs that serve racial
and ethnic minorities may help participants

get better at code switching—moving from
one cultural style of interacting to another.
After-school staff may have
more opportunities for
informal conversations and
shared activities than the
young people’s own parents.
Integration of family, school, and
community. When adult expectations and
values are consistent across family, school,
and community, it’s easier for young people
to establish positive attitudes and patterns
of behavior. Moreover, adults can use
their connections with other adults to help
give young people new opportunities and
connections of their own. Adult program
staff are uniquely positioned to bridge
youths’ social contexts such as family,
school, community, and workplace. They
can expose families, schools, and the
broader community to the SEL content that
program participants are learning. If they
do so, adults in other settings can reinforce
the after-school learning and apply it more
broadly.
Nurturance and support. Caring and
responsive staff members have the best
chance to enhance young people’s SEL
outcomes.20 Adults who have the capacity
to understand and appropriately respond
to young people’s cultural backgrounds
and needs are best positioned to build
strong, positive relationships. Thus, after-
school programs seeking to boost students’
SEL outcomes should screen adults for
key qualities such as attunement (that is,
the ability to read and flexibly respond to
SEL-Focused After-School Programs
young people’s needs and desires), effective
communication, and empathy. Adults who
understand the roles of power and privilege
in maintaining societal inequities can
effectively bridge differences have the best
chance to nurture and support all young
participants.
Youth-Staff Relationships
Unlike teachers, after-school program staff
don’t face heavy instructional requirements
and evaluation responsibilities. That means
they have more flexibility in working with
young people.21 In fact, after-school staff
may have more opportunities for informal
conversations and shared activities than
the young people’s own parents, who
may be contending with work and other
competing responsibilities. Unlike parents
and teachers, after-school staff not only
have time to share with young people
during the after-school hours, but can also
often do so around activities that align with
their interests. These less structured and
perhaps more enjoyable interactions may be
ideal for transferring adult values, advice,
and perspectives.22 After-school program
staff also tend to be closer in age to young
participants and are often from the same
communities. Both factors may encourage
closer relationships and lead young people
to see program staff as more credible
sources of information than teachers or
parents. These two factors may also help
after-school staff serve as role models,
especially if they’ve overcome challenges
similar to those that the program’s
participants face.23
In-depth observations of after-school
programs and interviews with staff members
and participants have identified features of
youth-staff relationships that appear to be
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related to young people’s SEL development.
These include such things as the nature of
staff-youth communication (for example, the
peerlike nature of interactions or culturally
relevant ways of communicating), the
way staff handle young people’s dilemmas
that crop up during the program, how
they express respect for participants, and
how staff and participants communicate
with each other about the young people’s
strengths and struggles.24 Using data from its
National Outcomes Survey, the Boys & Girls
Clubs of America examined associations
between youth-staff relationships and how
young people described their experiences
at the clubs. It found that young people
tended to have more positive experiences
when staff knew all the participants’ names,
had relationships with their parents, worked
well together, and had received training in
program planning.25 Although such research
can’t prove that links between youth-staff
relationships and outcomes are causal, it
nonetheless suggests that programs can
foster SEL when staff cultivate meaningful
relationships with young participants.
Supporting Adult Staff
If staff practices play a central role in young
people’s SEL development, then support for
the staff is crucial to after-school programs’
success. Recently, the SEL Challenge—a
collaboration among practitioners,
researchers, and a prominent national
foundation that analyzed eight highly
effective after-school programs across the
country—sought to identify key practices
that foster growth in six SEL outcomes:
emotion management, empathy, teamwork,
initiative, responsibility, and problem
solving.26 Among its recommendations,
the project suggested five strategies for
supporting program staff:
1 02   T HE F UT UR E OF C HI LDRE N
• First, programs should recruit
young people who are more likely
to benefit from participation (for
example, because their interests are
a good match with the program’s
activities). Seeing youth succeed in
the program is a powerful incentive
for staff because it reinforces the
challenging work that they do.
• Second, programs should ensure
that multiple staff members have
appropriate training in practices to
promote SEL. Staff members should
receive equivalent training so that
they can best support each other
and all youth in attendance. Having
many trained people on hand also
means that one staff member can
work on an individual participant’s
needs while another leads the larger
group.
• Third, staff members need
collaborative planning time before
program sessions and interactive
debriefing afterward to ensure that
they can communicate with one
another, prepare adequately for
program sessions, and work together
to respond to problems that arise.
Staff members may also need time
to process their own reactions to
program sessions and to support
one another when they encounter
difficulty. A supportive and collegial
environment can motivate staff
members to put forth their best
effort and may reduce staff turnover.
• Fourth, staff need organizational
supports such as extended vacation
after intensive periods of work,
mental health services or referrals,

resources for continued learning,
and check-ins with supervisors to
ensure the staff’s general wellbeing.
Staff who have the supports they
need to bolster their own mental
health and wellbeing are better
positioned to serve program
participants effectively.
• Fifth, programs should support
continuous improvement. Staff
need opportunities to reflect on
and refine program practices. The
inclusion of evaluation components
to assess their practices will make
staff members more aware of
strengths and areas that need
improvement. Such evaluations
could collect data from young
people, staff, and staff supervisors;
if these evaluations include self-
assessment, however, that should
not be the only component.
Is It Realistic to Expect After-
School Programs to Affect SEL?
After-school programs are natural settings
for promoting young people’s SEL skills.
Because the programs don’t face schools’
curricular demands, they can focus on
nonacademic skills. Well-run after-school
programs let young people participate
in activities that are meaningful to them
and that form rewarding relationships.
But despite these strengths, after-school
programs face a number of barriers in
promoting SEL. First, participation in
after-school programs isn’t mandatory.
As a result, SEL interventions in after-
school programs will never reach all young
people, and sporadic attendance may
dampen a program’s effects. Further, staff
turnover in after-school programs tends
SEL-Focused After-School Programs
to be high. Therefore, even though youth-
adult relationships can be a significant
strength of such programs, they can also
be less stable than in schools. Funders’
increasing focus on academic outcomes may
also lead programs to offer fewer types of
activities that are most likely to enhance
SEL. Some of these issues, such as sporadic
attendance, affect researchers’ ability to
confidently measure program effects. They
may also affect the quality of the programs
themselves, and as we discuss below, quality
has an impact on program effects.
Despite their strengths,
after-school programs face
a number of barriers in
promoting SEL, such as
sporadic attendance and high
staff turnover.
Do After-School Programs Affect
SEL?
Many comprehensive after-school programs
focus on personal and social skills broadly,
even if they don’t use the term SEL.
Reviews of how after-school programming
affects academic outcomes have yielded
mixed findings.27 Here we review the
research exploring SEL-related outcomes
from after-school programs that aim to
improve young people’s personal and
social development. These types of after-
school programs have been associated with
improvement in such SEL outcomes as
self-confidence, self-regulation, and social
competence, as well as with decreases in
adjustment problems such as delinquency,
depression, and anxiety.28 Evaluations of
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after-school programs that target SEL
skills, however, vary widely with respect to
the methods they use and the effects they
report.
In 2010, psychologists Joseph Durlak, Roger
Weissberg, and Molly Pachan published a
meta-analysis of after-school programs with
an explicit SEL component (a meta-analysis
is a statistical technique that combines the
results from many studies to test for overall
effects). 29 They included 68 studies of SEL-
focused after-school programs. About half
the programs targeted elementary school-
aged students, about one-third targeted
middle school–aged students, and about
10 percent were geared toward high school
students (several evaluations didn’t report
participants’ ages). About one-third of the
studies used a randomized design, meaning
that young people were randomly assigned
either to a program or to an alternative
such as a waiting list. Because a randomized
design removes bias introduced by self-
selection into a program (that is, young
people who sign up for and attend after-
school programs may differ in important
ways from those who don’t), it’s considered
the best way to test whether an intervention
works. The rest of the studies included in
the meta-analysis used what researchers
call quasi-experimental designs, which use
different approaches to cope with bias and
isolate program effects. Although more
than one-third of the studies did not give
much information about the demographics
of study participants, those that did
represented groups of young people who
were diverse with regard to race/ethnicity
and socioeconomic status.
The meta-analysis found that after-school
programs targeting SEL outcomes appear
to improve young people’s self-confidence,
1 04   T HE F UT UR E OF C HI LDRE N
positive attitudes toward school, positive
social behavior (for example, cooperation
and leadership), grades, and standardized
test scores. At the same time, they reduced
problematic behaviors such as aggression
and drug use. Overall, the size of these
effects was in the small-to-medium range;
in statistical terms, average program effect
sizes—a number that assesses how large
the difference is between two groups on
an outcome of interest—ranged from .12
for academic grades to .34 for increased
self-esteem.
Not all after-school programs targeting
SEL outcomes produced the desired
improvements in students’ skills and
behaviors. Only programs that used
evidence-based skills-training approaches
were effective in boosting students’ SEL
outcomes. Evidence-based skills-training
approaches met four requirements,
identified by the acronym SAFE: they
included a sequenced (S) set of activities,
emphasized active (A) forms of learning,
included a focused (F) component aimed
directly at improving students’ social and
emotional skills, and contained explicit (E)
learning objectives (that is, program staff
communicate to young people what they’re
expected to learn through the program).
Programs that didn’t follow the SAFE
guidelines showed no effects on the studied
SEL outcomes. The SAFE programs yielded
average effect sizes in the small-to-medium
range—from .14 for school attendance to
.37 for increased self-esteem.
The fact that SEL-focused after-school
programs can affect such a variety of
outcomes underscores their potential value.
Moreover, even if the size of the programs’
effects fell in the small-to-medium range,
those effects were larger than those found
 SEL-Focused After-School Programs

Table 1. SEL-Related Outcomes of After-School Programs

Program Population SEL Skills Assessed Findings

Boys & Girls Clubs Club members ages Psychosocial Positive experience at
of America (four 10–18 functioning clubs, but not
clubs in one city) attendance alone, was
associated with positive
outcomes
Boys & Girls Clubs Club members in Character development Greater attendance was
of America (10 seventh and eighth grade associated with
urban clubs) improvement in about
half the outcomes
assessed
Boys & Girls Clubs Club members and Self-concept, social skills, Greater attendance at
of America (one comparison group from attachment to family, clubs, but not
urban club) same community; mean risky behaviors participation alone, was
age 11 associated with positive
outcomes
Boys & Girls Clubs Club members nationally; Community service, Middle and high
of America (2,400 compared to data on peers social skills, risky school club members
clubs nationally) from other national studies behaviors volunteered more and
reported lower levels of
substance use; higher
quality and level of
participation associated
with some outcomes
4-H (in 42 states) 7,000 youth in grades 5 C’s—Confidence, In some grades
5–12 (~2,520 of those Competence, Character, 4-H members
were 4-H participants) Caring, and Connection— demonstrated more
as well as contribution positive outcomes in the
to community 5 C’s and were more
likely to contribute to
their communities
After School Matters High school students 21st Century Skills linked Positive effect on some
(apprenticeship program to SEL outcomes; no effect on
in Chicago)* majority of outcomes
Systematic review of Primarily low-income College aspirations, No effects
programs with recreational racial/ethnic minority believing the best about
or youth development focus students in urban areas people, bonding, feeling
combined with academic bad for others, feeling
supports * left out, sticking to beliefs
Maryland’s After School Elementary and middle Social skills, social Participation was linked
Community Grant Program school students bonding, delinquency, to small decreases in
(14 sites)** substance use delinquency for middle
school students
35 high-quality after- 3,000 elementary and Work habits, task Program participants
school programs from middle school students persistence, social improved in many of the
ethnically diverse, high skills, prosocial tested skills
poverty communities behaviors, problem
behaviors, misconduct

Sources: See endnote 30.

Note: * = experimental design; ** = three of 14 sites used experimental design.

VOL. 27 / NO. 1 / S PR ING 2017 105

Noelle Hurd and Nancy Deutsch
for other types of youth programs, such as
school-based drug prevention or mentoring
programs. In fact, the average effect of
SAFE after-school programs on students’
standardized test scores was larger than the
average effects found in meta-analyses for
after-school and summer school programs
that focus heavily on academics. The effects
of SAFE programs may also have been
underestimated. A high proportion of the
comparison group students (that is, those
who did not participate in a particular SEL
after-school program) were participating in
other types of after-school activities, rather
than attending no program at all. Further, at
least some of the SEL after-school programs
recorded fairly inconsistent attendance by
participants. Both of these factors make it
harder for researchers to isolate a program’s
effects. The fact that we see rather strong
findings despite the presence of factors that
could undermine their effects suggests that
SAFE after-school programs can indeed
foster SEL development along with a host of
other positive youth outcomes.
What Does the Rest of the
Research Say?
Beyond the meta-analysis by Durlak,
Weissberg, and Pachan, other evaluations
of after-school programs’ effects on SEL
outcomes have yielded inconsistent results.
Table 1 summarizes findings from studies of
after-school programs that have examined
SEL-related outcomes, ranging from studies
of single after-school centers to combined
studies of multiple programs. Although
there is a rich tradition of qualitatively
analyzing SEL development in after-school
programs using a descriptive approach, we
only included quantitative (that is, numeric)
findings in our summary so that we can
compare the sizes of program effects.
1 06   T HE F UT UR E OF C HI LDRE N
Participating in SEL-focused after-school
programs has been associated with outcomes
that include improvements in social skills,
prosocial behavior, community service,
civic activity, academic and school-related
outcomes, and reductions in delinquency
and other problem behaviors. But even
when studies have documented positive
effects on some outcomes, they tend to
find no effects on others. And the effects
they do find are often limited to certain
age groups or genders. Overall, findings
from correlational studies (that is, studies
that look at associations between programs
and outcomes without fully controlling for
sources of bias) tend to find some positive
outcomes, but experimental studies (that is,
studies that more completely account for
bias) find fewer or none. One limitation of
correlational studies is that they don’t let
us determine whether participation in the
program actually caused the differences we
see in youth outcomes, as opposed to the
possibility that the program attracted young
people who were already doing better than
their peers.
One trend that we see across many of the
studies is that program quality matters.
Attendance alone doesn’t appear to be
enough to promote SEL outcomes. Rather,
multiple studies have found that positive
outcomes are related to how much young
people participate in the program and the
quality of the experience they have there.
Although program quality is often measured
by outside observers, young people’s own
perceptions of program quality may also be
an important predictor of outcomes.31
Differences among Young People
Young people’s experiences in after-school
programs and the extent to which they

benefit from participation aren’t a function
of the program alone—they’re determined
by the fit between the program and the
young people’s characteristics.32 Not only
may outcomes differ across different
groups, but different program features may
be important to different young people.33
Despite the role that race, ethnicity, culture,
and other characteristics play in shaping
young people’s experiences in SEL-focused
after-school programs, however, few studies
have considered differences in experiences
and outcomes as a function of participants’
characteristics. Among the few studies that
have done so, age and gender have been
associated with differences in a program’s
effects.34 But these differences haven’t
shown a consistent pattern.
The very nature of after-
school programs poses
problems for researchers.
After-school programs are
both voluntary and, for many
families, necessary.
Why Have Findings Been
Disappointing?
Significant limitations make it hard to
draw definite conclusions from studies of
SEL-focused after-school programs. First,
many studies of after-school programs
don’t evaluate program curricula or specific
program activities, so it isn’t clear what
precisely is being evaluated. Second,
few studies of after-school programs
use research designs that prove a causal
link between participation and SEL-
related outcomes. Even studies that have
SEL-Focused After-School Programs
used rigorous randomized designs have
been criticized for other methodological
flaws, such as ignoring differences in
implementation across sites. Third,
evaluation studies often look only at
participation versus nonparticipation in a
given program. But participation comprises
many things, including frequency of
attendance, years of participation, breadth
of the activities in which one participates,
and quality of engagement.35 Therefore,
participation defined simply in terms of
attendance may not be related to effects.
Fourth, young people who don’t participate
in a given program are frequently
participating in another program, rather
than no program at all. Working parents
need childcare after school, and they’re
likely to find an alternative program if
their child isn’t assigned to the after-school
program being studied. For example, in
the experimental study of After School
Matters, 91 percent of the comparison
group participated in other after-school
programs.36 Thus, after-school research
is often comparing the program being
studied to another program or activity. And
as the Study of Promising After-School
Programs shows, many young people
participate in several programs, which
makes distinguishing the effects of any given
program even harder.37
Indeed, the very nature of after-school
programs poses problems for researchers.
After-school programs are both voluntary
and, for many families, necessary. Moreover,
many of the outcomes that researchers
are interested in are related to the very
youth and family characteristics that may
also affect young people’s participation in
after-school programs. Although it’s hard
for researchers to isolate program effects,
we recognize that after-school programs
VOL. 27 / NO. 1 / S PR ING 2017 107
Noelle Hurd and Nancy Deutsch
are an important part of the landscape
for young people, especially those who
live in marginalized communities and
attend under-resourced schools. Being
unsupervised in the after-school hours is
associated with substantial risk for young
people, suggesting that involvement in
any supervised after-school programs is
preferable to being left unsupervised.38
Consequently, it may be better if
researchers and practitioners focus on
improving the quality of programs rather
than on simply attempting to prove whether
particular programs work.
Where Should Researchers and
Practitioners Focus in the Future?
As we’ve noted, evaluations of after-school
programs—and the conclusions we can
draw from them—have been limited in
various ways. Self-selection into programs
restricts our ability to ascertain their
effects and determine whether any given
findings generalize to groups of young
people who differ in substantial ways from
those studied. Other complicating factors
include the tremendous variety in purpose,
activities, and dosage (that is, frequency
and length) across SEL-focused after-school
programs. All these factors likely play a role
in determining the extent to which young
people benefit. And as we’ve mentioned,
young people’s own attributes also likely
influence their experiences in programs,
meaning that some of them benefit more
than others.
It’s important to highlight all the challenges
facing evaluations of SEL-focused after-
school programs, because these challenges
can contribute to inconsistent findings
across evaluation studies. They can lead us
to find effects that don’t exist and to miss
1 08   T HE F UT UR E OF C HI LDRE N
effects that do. Currently, many researchers
argue that better integration of multiple
approaches to evaluation could better
account for the complexities inherent
in evaluating SEL-focused after-school
programming.39 Although randomized
design has been upheld as the gold standard
for evaluating program effects, this
approach does little to help us identify how
and why programs benefit (or fail to benefit)
young people. When assessments are
limited to closed-ended measures, and only
include measures of attitudes and behaviors
before and after a program, evaluators
miss the opportunity to collect more
detailed information about how individuals
experienced the program and what they
found to be most or least beneficial. As
a result, evaluators may not be able to
explain what about the program made a
difference (or why it didn’t)—and that’s the
kind of information that can help programs
improve. Integrating various approaches
to evaluating programs—for example, by
including open-ended interviews with
program staff and participants—could help
researchers determine not just whether a
program benefited its participants, but also
understand why it did or did not confer
benefits and in what other contexts we may
or may not expect to see effects.40 Extensive
observations of highly effective SEL-focused
after-school programs have identified
universal processes that effectively build
SEL across different programs, and
they’ve pointed to program practices
that best promote these processes.41 And
new measures (for example, the Youth
Program Quality Assessment) have been
developed to assess two critical ingredients
of SEL-focused after-school programs:
the quality of the setting as a whole, and
the experiences and interactions of the
young people and adults in that setting.42

Measuring these dimensions also can help
to capture universal processes that drive
program effects, and programs can use
such assessments to drive improvements
in their practices. The notion that only
researchers should conduct evaluations is
antiquated. Scholars increasingly advocate
for greater bidirectional influence between
research and practice and for shifting the
broader agenda of evaluation research away
from proving what works to identifying
opportunities to improve programs.43
This approach to evaluation could greatly
enhance the experiences and outcomes
of young people who attend SEL-focused
after-school programs.
We also advocate for considering social
justice in the practice and study of SEL-
focused after-school programing. For
example, we should ask what program
factors can promote the greatest
improvements among the most marginalized
and underserved youth.44 Moreover,
underserved youth may find it harder to get
to after-school programs because of factors
such as cost and transportation. If they can’t
get to after-school programs, they’re likely
to spend more time in unsupervised and
unstructured activities, placing them further
at risk for poor outcomes. Staff turnover
and limited program offerings also tend to
be more common in programs that serve
marginalized youth. In this way, after-school
programs may replicate and extend societal
inequality. If young people’s experiences in
after-school programs vary in accordance
with their access to resources more
generally, such programs will exacerbate
disparities rather than remedy them.
Implications for Policy
To bolster the potential of after-school
SEL-Focused After-School Programs
programs to promote improvements
in SEL, we must look beyond research
and practice to consider the pivotal
role of policy. To start, we make several
recommendations for policy changes
at various levels that could make adult
staff more effective. Positive youth-staff
relationships likely are the driving force of
effective after-school programs targeting
SEL outcomes, and a number of structural
program elements may determine whether
these relationships confer benefits to
participating youth. For example, a high
youth-staff ratio and high staff turnover
can undermine the formation of strong ties
between young people and adults. High-
quality programs have been found to have
low staff turnover rates and to hire staff
with more experience and higher levels of
education.45 Yet the after-school workforce
as a whole tends to have high turnover
rates, and workers enter the field with
mixed levels of relevant prior experience—
and, as with other childcare jobs, the pay
is low.46 Thus, programs may have a hard
time hiring and retaining the most qualified
people.
One way to boost staff quality is to
professionalize after-school staff positions.47
These positions often feature low status
and low pay, and they seldom provide
opportunities for hierarchical advancement
within a youth-serving organization.
A greater emphasis on professional
development, growth, and career
advancement is key to improving staff
quality and retention. Furthermore, staff
evaluations should focus explicitly on the
quality of interactions with young people,
and incentives should be provided for staff
members who consistently perform well
or demonstrate improvements. We can
also help create professional networks of
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Noelle Hurd and Nancy Deutsch
youth workers—similar to teacher learning
communities—so that they can learn
from one another and access in-person
and online opportunities for networking,
training, and support.48
Another challenge is that staff positions
in after-school programs are, by their
very nature, part-time. Hence they may
be better suited to young adults who
are completing their education, or to
retirees. One way to encourage young
adults to take these positions would be
to forgive student loans in exchange for
a set time commitment to after-school
programs in underserved communities.
Such an approach could make these
positions more desirable for young adults
and diminish staff turnover in under-
resourced programs. Giving young adults
opportunities to advance into full-
time positions in an organization could
also help to attract qualified staff and
would increase opportunities for junior
leadership. And some organizations, such
as Boys and Girls Clubs of America, have
junior staff programs in which teenage
participants undertake an apprenticeship
program aimed at developing their skills
and interests in human services work.
In any program, as staff members move
through the ranks, they could mentor less
experienced hires.
Another option for overcoming the
problems associated with part-time work
would be to hire staff who can combine
school and after-school work hours. This
could mean hiring teachers and teacher’s
aides as after-school program staff or
finding opportunities for after-school
staff to extend their hours by working in
schools during the day.49 Such an approach
might not only enhance the quality of
1 10   T HE F UT UR E OF C HI LDRE N
after-school program staff, it could also
bridge young people’s school and after-
school experiences. Consistency of adults
across different contexts can further support
SEL development.
Policy could also alter the approach to
evaluating after-school programs by
broadening the criteria used to determine
whether programs are effective and,
consequently, worth funding. The current
overemphasis on academic and economic
outcomes leads to neglect of SEL outcomes
that are valuable in their own right and
also have great potential to foster more
successful life outcomes over time. Focusing
exclusively on academic improvement or
reductions in problem behavior as the
key determinants of effective after-school
programming can mean taking resources
away from programs that effectively
foster growth in SEL competencies. And
because SEL competencies can take
time to translate into improvements in
academic performance and classroom
behavior, programs shouldn’t lose funding
if little or no immediate change can be
seen in those outcomes. Expanding the
criteria used to evaluate programs to
include key SEL outcomes could also
help to produce productive and engaged
citizens, rather than just high-achieving
students.50 Collectively, we should invest
in supporting the next generation’s ability
to make positive contributions to society
in many areas. Undoubtedly, feeling self-
confident and being able to effectively
manage relationships with others are central
to engaged citizenship, and the personal and
social skills that constitute SEL are at the
core of civil society.
We’ve discussed the need for evaluations of
after-school programs to shift from focusing

solely on whether programs are effective
to focusing on how to make them work
better. The current policy environment
isn’t structured to support such a shift.
Notions of accountability reinforce the
removal of human and financial support
from programs when evaluations don’t
show effects. This policy climate may,
in fact, discourage programs from
seeking evaluation and may undermine
opportunities to learn about nuanced
aspects of programs that could be modified
to yield program benefits. An alternative
approach to evaluation would prioritize
finding the key elements of features
or practices that have been linked to
improvements in after-school participants’
outcomes. Evaluation data could then drive
program improvements and subsequent
SEL-Focused After-School Programs
re-evaluation. High-stakes evaluations create
a disincentive for programs to undertake
the difficult work of assessing their practices
and outcomes. But creating incentives for
evaluation would better support after-school
programs’ efforts to further develop and
refine their approaches to fostering young
people’s SEL development. After-school
programs are uniquely positioned to further
the goals of the SEL movement. Not only
are their objectives aligned with those
of targeted SEL interventions, they also
can help level the playing field for young
people with the fewest resources. Thus,
allocating more attention and resources to
determining how we can best promote SEL
after school holds promise for broadening
the SEL movement’s impact on all young
people.
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Noelle Hurd and Nancy Deutsch

ENDNOTES
1. Robert C. Granger et al., “Improving After-School Program Quality,” working paper, William T. Grant
Foundation, New York, 2007.
2. Robert Halpern, “A Different Kind of Child Development Institution: The History of After-School
Programs for Low-Income Children,” Teachers College Record 104 (2002): 178–211.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid. 199.
5. “Our Mission,” Boys & Girls Clubs of America, http://www.bgca.org/whoweare/Pages/Mission.aspx.
6. “Benefits of 4-H,” 4-H, http://4-h.org/parents/benefits.
7. Robert C. Granger, “Understanding and Improving Effectiveness of After-School Practice,” American
Journal of Community Psychology 45 (2010): 441–6, doi:10.1007/s10464-010-9301.
8. Kim M. Pierce, Daniel M. Bolt, and Deborah L. Vandell, “Specific Features of After-School Program
Quality: Associations with Children’s Functioning in Middle Childhood,” American Journal of
Community Psychology 45 (2010): 381–93, doi: 10.1007/s10464-010-9304-2.
9. Deborah L. Vandell et al., “Children’s Organized Activities,” in Handbook of Child Psychology and
Developmental Science, vol. 4, Ecological Settings and Processes in Developmental Systems, ed. Marc.
H. Bornstein and Tama Leventhal, 7th ed. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2015).
10. National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, Community Programs to Promote Youth
Development (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2002).
11 Charles Smith et al., Preparing Youth to Thrive: Promising Practices for Social and Emotional Learning
(Washington, DC: Forum for Youth Investment, 2016).
12. Reed W. Larson and Rachel M. Angus, “Pursuing Paradox: The Role of Adults in Creating Empowering
Settings for Youth,” in Empowering Settings and Voices for Social Change, ed. Mark Aber, Kenneth
Maton, and Edward Seidman (New York: Oxford, 2010), 65–93.
13. Richard F. Catalano et al., “Positive Youth Development in the United States: Research Findings on
Evaluations of Positive Youth Development Programs,” Annals of the American Academy of Political
and Social Science 591 (2004): 98–124, doi: 10.1177/0002716203260102.
14. Biren (Ratnesh) A. Nagda and Patricia Gurin, “Intergroup Dialogue: A Critical-Dialogic Approach to
Learning about Difference, Inequality, and Social Justice,” New Directions for Teaching and Learning
111 (2007): 35–45, doi: 10.1002/tl.284.
15. Joanna L. Williams and Nancy L. Deutsch, “Beyond Between-Group Differences: Considering Race,
Ethnicity, and Culture in Research on Positive Youth Development Programs,” Applied Developmental
Science 20 (2016): 2031–13, doi: 10.1080/10888691.2015.1113880.
16. L. Rowell Huesmann and Nancy G. Guerra, “Children’s Normative Beliefs about Aggression
and Aggressive Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 72 (1997): 408–19, doi:
10.1037/0022-3514.72.2.408.
17. Milbrey W. McLaughlin, Community Counts: How Youth Organizations Matter for Youth Development
(Washington DC: Public Education Network, 2000).
18. Ibid.
19. Smith et al., Preparing Youth to Thrive.
20. McLaughlin, Community Counts.

1 12   T HE F UT UR E OF C HI LDRE N
 SEL-Focused After-School Programs

21. Jean E. Rhodes, “The Critical Ingredient: Caring Youth-Staff Relationships in After-School Settings,”
New Directions for Youth Development 101 (2004): 145–61, doi: 10.1002/yd.75.
22. Jean E. Rhodes, Jean B. Grossman, and Nancy L. Resch, “Agents of Change: Pathways through Which
Mentoring Relationships Influence Adolescents’ Academic Adjustment,” Child Development 71 (2000):
1662–71, doi: 10.1111/1467-8624.00256.
23. Jennifer G. Roffman, Carola Suarez-Orozco, and Jean E. Rhodes, “Facilitating Positive Development
in Immigrant Youth: The Role of Mentors and Community Organizers,” in Community Youth
Development: Programs, Policies and Practices, ed. Francisco A. Villarruel et al. (Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage, 2003), 90–117.
24. Barton J. Hirsch, A Place to Call Home: After-School Programs for Urban Youth (New York: Teachers
College Press, 2005); Reed W. Larson and Kathrin C. Walker, “Dilemmas of Practice: Challenges
to Program Quality Encountered by Youth Program Leaders,” American Journal of Community
Psychology 45 (2010): 338–49, doi: 10.1007/s10464-010-9307-z; Nancy L. Deutsch and Jeffrey N. Jones,
“Show Me an Ounce of Respect: Respect and Authority in Adult-Youth Relationships in After-School
Programs,” Journal of Adolescent Research 23 (2008): 667–88, doi: 10.1177/0743558408322250; Barton
J. Hirsch, Nancy L. Deutsch, and David L. DuBois, After-School Centers and Youth Development: Case
Studies of Success and Failure (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
25. Boys & Girls Clubs of America, National Youth Outcomes Initiative 2014 Outcomes Report: From
Indicators to Impact (Atlanta: Boys & Girls Clubs of America, 2014), http://www.bgca.org/whoweare/
Documents/2014_National_Outcomes_Report-FINAL.pdf.
26. Smith et al., Preparing Youth to Thrive.
27. Robert C. Granger and Thomas Kane, “Improving the Quality of After-School Programs,” Education
Week 23 (2004): 52; Deborah L. Vandell et al., The Study of Promising After-School Programs:
Descriptive Report of the Promising Programs (Madison, WI: Wisconsin Center for Education
Research, University of Wisconsin, 2004).
28. Vandell et al., “Children’s Organized Activities”; Priscilla M. D. Little, Christopher Wimer, and Heather
B. Weiss, “After School Programs in the 21st Century: Their Potential and What It Takes to Achieve It,”
Issues and Opportunities in Out-of-School Time Evaluation, no. 10 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Family
Research Project, February 2008).
29 Joseph A. Durlak, Roger P. Weissberg, and Molly Pachan, “A Meta-Analysis of After-School Programs
that Seek to Promote Personal and Social Skills in Children and Adolescents,” American Journal of
Community Psychology 45 (2010): 294–309, doi: 10.1007/s10464-010-9300-6.
30. Jennifer G. Roffman, Maria E. Pagano, and Barton J. Hirsch, “Youth Functioning and Experiences
in Inner-City After-School Programs Among Age, Gender, and Race Groups,” Journal of Child and
Family Studies 10 (2001): 85–100, doi: 10.1023/A:1016681517546; Amy Arbreton et al., Making Every
Day Count: Boys & Girls Clubs’ Role in Promoting Positive Outcomes for Teens (Philadelphia: Public/
Private Ventures, 2009); Dawn Anderson-Butcher and Scottye J. Cash, “Participation in Boys & Girls
Clubs, Vulnerability, and Problem Behaviors,” Children and Youth Services Review 32 (2010): 672–78,
doi: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2010.01.002; Boys & Girls Clubs of America, 2014 Outcomes Report; Richard
M. Lerner et al., The Positive Development of Youth: Comprehensive Findings from the 4-H Study of
Positive Youth Development (Chevy Chase, MD: National 4-H Council, 2013); Barton J. Hirsch et al.,
After-School Programs for High School Students: An Evaluation of After School Matters (Evanston, IL:
Northwester University, 2011); Susan Goerlich Zief, Sheri Lauver, and Rebecca A. Maynard, “Impacts
of After-School Programs on Student Outcomes: A Systematic Review,” Campbell Systematic Reviews
(2006), no. 3, doi: 10.4073/csr.2006.3; Denise C. Gottfredson et al., “Do After School Programs Reduce
Delinquency?” Prevention Science 5 (2004): 253–66, doi: 10.1023/B:PREV.0000045359.41696.02;
Elizabeth R. Reisner et al., Charting the Benefits of High-Quality After-School Program Experiences:
Evidence from New Research on Improving After-School Opportunities for Disadvantaged Youth

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Noelle Hurd and Nancy Deutsch

(Washington, DC: Policy Studies Associates, 2007); Deborah L. Vandell, Elizabeth R. Reisner, and Kim
M. Pierce, Outcomes Linked to High-Quality Afterschool Programs: Longitudinal Findings from the
Study of Promising Afterschool Programs (Irvine: University of California, Irvine, 2007).
31. Sabrina Kataoka and Deborah L. Vandell, “Quality of Afterschool Activities and Relative Change in
Adolescent Functioning over Two Years,” Applied Developmental Science 17 (2013): 123–34, doi:
10.1080/10888691.2013.804375.
32. Greg J. Duncan and Deborah L. Vandell, Understanding Variation in the Impacts of Human Capital
Interventions on Children and Youth (Irvine: Irvine Network on Interventions in Development,
University of California, 2012).
33. Barton J. Hirsch, Megan A. Mekinda, and JulieAnn Stawicki, “More than Attendance: The Importance
of After-School Program Quality,” American Journal of Community Psychology 45 (2010): 447–52, doi:
10.1007/s10464-010-9310-4.
34. Lerner, et al., Positive Development of Youth; Jennifer G. Roffman, Maria E. Pagano, and Barton
J. Hirsch, “Youth Functioning and Experiences in Inner-City After-School Programs Among
Age, Gender, and Race Groups,” Journal of Child and Family Studies 10 (2001): 85–100, doi:
10.1023/A:1016681517546; Deborah L. Vandell, Elizabeth R. Reisner, and Kim M. Pierce, Outcomes
Linked to High-Quality Afterschool Programs: Longitudinal Findings from the Study of Promising
Afterschool Programs (Irvine: University of California, Irvine, 2007).
35. Jennifer A. Fredericks et al., “Measuring Youth Participation, Program Quality, and Social and
Emotional Skills in Afterschool Programs,” in Advances in Child and Family Policy and Practice:
Integrating Research into Practice and Policy, vol.1, ed. Nancy L. Deutsch (New York: Springer,
forthcoming).
36. Barton J. Hirsch et al., After-School Programs for High School Students: An Evaluation of After School
Matters (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University, 2011).
37. Elizabeth R. Reisner et al., Charting the Benefits of High-Quality After-School Program Experiences:
Evidence from New Research on Improving After-School Opportunities for Disadvantaged Youth
(Washington, DC: Policy Studies Associates, 2007); Vandell et al., Longitudinal Findings.
38. Reisner et al., Charting the Benefits.
39. Patrick H. Tolan and Nancy L. Deutsch, “Mixed Methods in Developmental Science,” in Handbook
of Child Psychology and Developmental Science, vol. 1, Theory and Method, ed. Willis F. Overton and
Peter C. M. Molenaar, 7th ed. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2015), 713–57.
40. David W. Grissmer, Rena F. Subotnik, and Martin Orland, A Guide to Incorporating Multiple
Methods in Randomized Controlled Trials to Assess Intervention Effects (Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association, 2009).
41. Smith et al., Preparing Youth to Thrive.
42. Charles Smith and Charles Hohmann, The Youth Program Quality Assessment Validation Study:
Findings for Instrument Validation (Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Educational Research Foundation,
2005).
43. Dale A. Blyth, “Making the Personal, Social and Economic Impact of Youth Work More Visible: An
American Perspective on the Use of Evidence,” paper presented at informal meeting of European
Union directors general of youth, Dublin, Ireland, March 13, 2013.
44. Nancy L. Deutsch et al., “Let’s Talk After-School: The Promises and Challenges of Positive Youth
Development for After-school Research, Policy, and Practice,” in Deutsch, Advances.

1 14   T HE F UT UR E OF C HI LDRE N
 SEL-Focused After-School Programs

45. Denise Huang and Ronald Dietel, Making Afterschool Programs Better (Los Angeles: National Center
for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST), UCLA Graduate School of
Education and Information Studies, 2011), http://cresst.org/wp-content/uploads/huang_MAPB_v5.pdf.
46. Judy Nee et al., Understanding the Afterschool Workforce: Opportunities and Challenges for an
Emerging Profession (Oakton, VA: National AfterSchool Association, 2006), http://2crsolutions.com/
images/NAAUnderstandingtheAfterschoolWorkforceNovember.pdf.
47. Deutsch et al. “Let’s Talk After-School.”
48. Milbrey W. McLaughlin and Joan E. Talbert, Building School-Based Teacher Learning Communities:
Professional Strategies to Improve Student Achievement (New York: Teachers College Press, 2006).
49. Rhodes, “Critical Ingredient.”
50. Deutsch et al. “Let’s Talk After-School.”

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